Important for Windows clients: The CUPS PostScript driver for Windows has a bug which makes
it choking on PPD files which contain GUI texts longer than 39 characters. Therefore it is
recommended to use Adobe's PostScript driver. If you still want to use the CUPS driver,
please mark "GUI texts limited to 39 characters" to get an appropriate PPD file.

Comments

Ghostscript's HP LaserJet 4 (PCL 5e) driver.

"ljet4" is the classical Ghostscript driver for PCL 5e
printers. It is probably widely used, as it is part of Ghostscript
and does not require any extra software, but before Ghostscript
8.x its output quality was lousy and one has searched for
alternative drivers. From Ghostscript 8.x the well-tempered
screening was introduced which gives much better quality for
half-tone images. You can make use of it by downloading the PPD
file for your printer here and using the "HalftoningAlgorithm"
option.

The "lj4dith"
Ghostscript driver which uses Floyd-Steinberg dithering to improve
the image output quality. Unfortunately, this driver has problems
with the margins. The document is not placed exactly at the same
position as with the "ljet4" driver. The page seems to be shifted
to the upper right, probably due to the upper and right
unprintable borders not taken into account. Formerly, you could
use the driver with the same PPD file as "ljet4", simply by
switching an option, but we have removed this feature due to the
paper size problem. Use Well-Tempered screening if you want to
enhance the image printing quality.

Use the "ljet4d"
Ghostscript driver for Duplex (double-sided printing)
support.

A Ghostscript bug in the driver breaks paper input tray
selection. This patch
for GPL Ghostscript 8.63 fixes the problem and allows to set the
input tray with the "-dMediaPosition=X" commmand line
option for Ghostscript. "X" is an integer number which
depends on the printer model and tray. For HP "0" is
usually the printer default, "7" automatic selection,
"2" manual feed, "1" the upper, and
"4" the lower tray. Note that for PCL 6/XL these numbers
are different. The patch is required for Ghostscript 8.63 and
older so that tray selection with the PPDs of this site works. The
bug is fixed in Ghostscript 8.64 or newer.

A good PCL 5e driver is HPIJS
which is developed by HP to support their non-PostScript laser
printers. Gutenprint
supports even PCL 4, 5, and 5e so that it serves as an alternative
driver even for older printers. Gutenprint has many dithering
algorithms to choose, but most are optimized for inkjets.

Note that many printers listed as supported by this driver also
understand PCL-XL and so they can be used with the
"lj5gray" and
"pxlmono"/"pxlcolor" drivers which give a much
higher output quality and resolutions up to 1200 dpi,

Unfortunately, the PCL drivers are not always absolutely
compatible with every printer.